quote: It also depends wether you want 2 years warrenty or virtualy no warrenty and if you want Good customer support or no customer support !! All joking apart if you want to just copy games get the Lite-on. If you want a good allrounder CD Writer but not perfect with Safedisk 2.5 unless you use Clone CD AWS but with good customer support and 2 years warrenty in Europe get the Plextor.

Hey Mike !!! Also it will work with Norton Ghost 2002 !!!!

But if it were me I would wait a few weeks for The Yamaha CRW-F1 to come out this is going to be some Super machine ( I hope but we will have to see ) !!!!

Laffin Assassin

It's Nice to be Important!!! But it's more Important to be NICE!!!

Edited by - Laffin Assassin on 07/11/2002 17:33:12

So, will this new Yamaha CRW-F1 do it all? I mean copy games, copy copy protected music cd's, and support Mt Rainier?

We will have to wait for John's review, they are not available in the UK yet expected time is 1-2 days at the moment so I have got to wait untill Dabs.com send me one. I cannot see them having any problem backing up any program as long as you use the right software but we will have to wait and see !

Im in the process of getting the lite-on 40x on the advice of many people as the writer i have the mitshiti cw-7586 was a bundled one from a computer manufacturer and it wont do safedisc...having been on a lot of forums about game backups lots of people seem to prefer the lite-ons (especally at clone cd) this is my first post here and im not going to ask about this drive till ive read the rest of the posts but i hope they will favour this drive as im kind of set on it ......also hello to everyone

I think to compare LiteOn and Plextor is analog to compare Poor and Rich. In the normal market, Plextor is considered to be luxurious product. Of course, Plextor no doubt gives you better all rounded quality. LiteOn, for those in the middle class, may consider as a necessity. LiteOn will not give you superior all rounded quality, but it still can fullfil your basic needs. If we are going to benchmark the two drives in term of a ratio (features per price). Then, LiteOn will have a higher ratio, indicating that you pay less to get the similar features. Although the features are not identical bewteen the two drives, but in the market, there is always a norm to equate these features. Your decision is subjected to budget and what utility you want to achieve. However, LiteOn is the optimized solution to the budbet and utility.

quote: I think to compare LiteOn and Plextor is analog to compare Poor and Rich. In the normal market, Plextor is considered to be luxurious product. Of course, Plextor no doubt gives you better all rounded quality. LiteOn, for those in the middle class, may consider as a necessity. LiteOn will not give you superior all rounded quality, but it still can fullfil your basic needs. If we are going to benchmark the two drives in term of a ratio (features per price). Then, LiteOn will have a higher ratio, indicating that you pay less to get the similar features. Although the features are not identical bewteen the two drives, but in the market, there is always a norm to equate these features. Your decision is subjected to budget and what utility you want to achieve. However, LiteOn is the optimized solution to the budbet and utility.

Actually, it is the Liteon that is more feature rich, as it can do common everyday things the Plextor can not, like SD 2.51.

It doesn't matter how great a drive is built, or how much you pay for it. If there comes a time when you want to make a backup, and you can't, even after spending the big $$, then it is a sorry purchase. Of course if you only spent spare change on a drive, and later found it couldn't do something, then the loss would not be so bad. Spending big $$ for half ass stinks.

Also the quality of Plextors is a HUGE myth. They fail just as much as any other drive, if not more so.. As pointed out earlier, just check the refurb sections of your favorite vender. Usually find plenty of Plextors to choose from.

The point is if Plextor are found to be faulty they are changed if Lite-on's are faulty you just throw them away as their customer support does not exist ! As for you saying that check the refurb Plextors yes I agree there are listed as Refurbished Writers. Why don't you see Refurbished Lite-on's the reason being if you do eventualy find customer support and return your faulty Writer they send you a re-furbished one out to replace the so called new one you have just sent them back so why should you see them when Lite-on are giving there customers them for free !!!

Laffin Assassin said "The point is if Plextor are found to be faulty they are changed if Lite-on's are faulty you just throw them away as their customer support does not exist !"

I feel sorry for you for not knowing your rights. In most countries in the world, you are entitled to a refund or an exchanged for a new unit if your purchase does not do what it is meant to do. The law protects you. Call the police or the Consumer Protection Office if the shop refuses a refund.

Hey crazed burner Believe you me I do know my rights. And if you bothered to learn yours you would have found out that most shops that sell Computer Components only give you a 30 Day Exchange warrenty and for the next 11 months of your 12 Months Warrenty it is Down to the Manufacturers to Exchange your Faulty Product not the Shop !!!

You Say "The law protects you. Call the police or the Consumer Protection Office if the shop refuses a refund." Yeah Right so you buy a new product and it gets a fault on day 31 so then you do what you suggest then wait a couple of months for it to get sorted out (If it ever does ) And then you get sent another one that is faulty so go through all the Proceedure again and wait another few months, Yeah great that makes a lot of sense dosen't it. When all you had to do in the first place was get a Plextor or Yamaha and they are swapped without question and it is done within Days not Months !!!

That is why you need to check on the return policy before you buy it. You can not blame the company or the drive if you are not doing a little checking yourself. I also have 2 Liteons, a bunch of my friends have them, I have family members that have them, and I do not know one person who ever had trouble, or needed to return one. The "best drive" question has been asked on every forum on the net, and everyone has thier own opinion, so in my opinion the Liteon is a great drive. Plextor is also a great drive. Like I have said over and over, it depends on what you are doing with the drive. If you want to do protected Audio then you want the Plextor, and if you want to do protected computer games you want the Liteon. Just make sure to do your homework when you buy anything, make sure you ask the questions about the return policy in case you are one of the unlucky ones that has to do this. Maybe the solution is to get a Plextor AND a Liteon! LOL......

Plextor initially became very well known for producing high quality SCSI drives that could read and copy audio very easily. However, all of the time, their price was higher than the competition.

Nowdays many companies have flooded the market with all sorts of ATAPI drives, for all tastes. LiteOn was not one of my favourites, in fact nobody cared to import such drives in my country (Greece) in the past. The things changed, however with the adoption of LiteOn drives inside Sony products. Now you can have a decent return policy and a warranty that is covered by a more "reliable" brandname.

All this are said because you talked so much about warranty and aftersales support.

I would like to raise another issue, important for me, it is the hardware issue. By averaging opinions on various forums, I see that Plextor yet maintains a "high quality" mark, leaving all drives behind. Regardless of the amount of disagreement I'll receive in your replies, I must say that this quality issue is just another marketing myth, that has been left in our consciousness from the past days. And I'll try to give you some clues to start thinking about.

Remember, when was it the last time you saw a CDR(W) drive die due to PUH inability to operate, or due to mechanics failure? Whenever I go visit my old workplace, I still see lots of yamahas 100 or 400 that still manage to do their job, my yamaha 4416 has copied 1000s of CDs and still wants more, I even get working reports from drives I considered inferior, such as the philips 2610 or the HP 7001 :) Yeap, they are all there, working, and will shake their tail at you when you toss them a blank cdr :)

I want to say that from the mechanical or the electronic point of view, I see no problem. The only thing that now matters to me is the firmware.

As you see, plextors are historically proven good audio readers/writers. I could not disagree on the reading part because I had been using 7 12x drives in a SCSI tower and know they are fine readers. It is the firmware that makes this drive a "good reader", giving it the ability to perform extensive error correction at high speed? Is it the firmware again that makes the LiteOn lightning fast when it comes to reading/DAO and sluggish when they encounter a problem on the disk? Is it the firmware that can turn your drive from a 40x unit to a 48x unit and give you MtRainier support?

So, IMHO, this is where the actual war is taking place.

I won't stand on the myth that plextors are the finest writers. This is crap. You are writing sectors of bytes and subchannel info, you are not performing critical pick up head adjustments on your expensive turntable.. Just like that simple. I recognize on Plextor it had motivated evolution by being among the pioneers of adopting large buffers and burnproof technologies. Nowdays, however, all drives take precautions against the notorious buffer underrun and this can no more be an argument for "plextor being the king of the writers".

So, what is left for plextor? Higher grade of plastic? Two year warranty against the 1 year warranty others offer? Just tell me.

Do not think I hate Plextors or that I like liteons. I'm a cold judge that focuses on the features-to-price ratio. So, I consider a modern plextor a good drive but overpriced for its money and I consider liteon a cheap drive that however does an excellent job.

(And all these have no relation to my personal preference, for the type of work I do, my flavour is Yamaha)

Hi muhaha You Say "The things changed, however with the adoption of LiteOn drives inside Sony products. Now you can have a decent return policy and a warranty that is covered by a more "reliable" brandname."

I suggest you do a search on the forum and see what some of our members think of Sony Customer Support and about their Firmware Upgrades for their Writerss or should I say Lack of them !!!

The issue of "support" is country specific to me. I do not generalize things as you seem to be doing, but prefer to examine each case separately. So, here's your input data:

I live in Greece, as I wrote in my previous post. Nobody cares to import LiteOns here, so there is practically no official support. I could had ordered a drive from outside, however I preferred to cover under another brandname, which, at least has support here in Greece. From previous communications with Sony Hellas on behalf of a friend's case, I found a very easy way to get down to a solution. Maybe I was lucky, maybe they want to make good impressions in our promising market, who knows. For me one fact counts: I did my job.

Yep, they may be fed up in UK, bored in Germany, dunno.. But in Greece they appear to be live and functional. My impression, maybe. That's what I got. Lucky me, who knows.. If it comes to using my warranty, which I personally doubt, I'll let you know more details [:p]

For all ppl: Since I hate being the devil's advocate and indirectly say "sony was good for me", I also say that begin with the "every company's lousy" moto and let them gain ther points, if they prove hard they deserve it.

Hi muhaha Well said Mate and from your Post I think I will have to move To Greece as it looks like you are right about Sony and I suppose all the big Companies will be doing the same so that would make my Life a lot easier !!!

Hi muhaha Well said Mate and from your Post I think I will have to move To Greece as it looks like you are right about Sony and I suppose all the big Companies will be doing the same so that would make my Life a lot easier !!!

Many people here in Australia consider Sony the #1 brand in electrical appliances - including me!

Sony has really good customer support here and are ahead of their game, top quality. I must say their potable Walkman's (be it CD/MP3, MD, Network) all are the benchmark for others to follow. There are so many of Sony's products I love and a few I hate (namely Key2Audio, SecuROM, Libcrypt [:(!]etc...)

I use exclusively Sony media, it performs/lasts the best in my opinion (along with Mitsubishi Chemical and Taiyo Yuden)...